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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 78: Nov-Dec 1991 |
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Marcahuasi: a mystery in stone
In her newsletter of October 1, J. Hunt publishes a letter from B. Cote that tells briefly of an eerie Peruvian site:
"In June of 1989, a group of us traveled to Peru and visited a 12,500foot plateau called Marcahuasi. We spent only one night there, but what we saw was so exciting that we decided to go back and make a film of it. The entire plateau seems to be populated with hundreds of figures carved out ot stone, some of them 90 feet tall. Yet this unique spot is relatively unknown to the outside world."What little is written about Marcahuasi indicates a certain reluctance on the part of archaeologists to say that the figures are man-made. Indeed, many of them are subtle and not always obvious to the viewer. But that is precisely what contributes to the mystery. There are so many recognizable forms there, that one is tempted to say they must be man-made, or else nature is having a great joke on us.
"Daniel Ruzo, a 90-year-old archa eologist who lives near Mexico City, aided us. The figures we saw and filmed in 1989 were both strange and fascinating. We were first greeted by a 60-foot rock called by Ruzo The Monument to Humanity because several different races are recognizable on it. They overlap each other in a unique way, but one can clearly discern a Caucasian youth, a Semitic man, a skull-like face that could be Negroid, and several others.
"There are many other faces on the plateau, as well as animals. Some of the animals depicted never existed on the continent, such as the rhino, lion, camel, and a turtle-like creature."
(Cote, Bill; "Marcahuasi--A Mystery in Stone," Louisiana Mounds Society News letter, no. 42, p. 1, October 1, 1991.)